In democratic countries, governmental officials are chosen by the citizens in an election. Conducting an election and voting for candidates for public office in the United States can be performed in several different ways. One such way utilizes mechanical voting machines at predetermined polling places. When potential voters enter the predetermined polling place, voting personnel verify that each voter is properly registered in that voting district and that they have not already voted in that election. Thus, for a voter to cast his vote, he must go to the polling place at which he is registered, based on the voter's residence. Another method for conducting an election and voting utilizes paper ballots that are mailed to the voter who marks the ballot and returns the ballot to the voting authority running the election through the mail. In the usual vote by mail process, the voter marks the ballot to cast his/her vote and then inserts the ballot in a return envelope which is typically pre-addressed to the voter registrar office in the corresponding county, town or locality in which the voter is registered. The voter typically appends his/her signature on the back of the envelope adjacent his/her human or machine readable identification.
When the return envelope is received at the registrar's office of the voting authority, a voting official compares the voter signature on the envelope with the voter signature retrieved from the registration file to make a determination as to whether or not the identification information and signature are authentic and valid, and therefore the vote included in the envelope should be counted. If the identification information and signature are deemed to be authentic and valid, the identifying information and signature are separated from the sealed ballot before it is handed to the ballot counters for tabulation. In this manner, the privacy of the voter's selections is maintained and thus the ballot remains a “secret ballot.”
Prior art voting systems, and in particular vote by mail systems as just described, suffer from a number of drawbacks, including the fact that in many cases they lack security and the fact that the vote counting can potentially be modified without being detected. In such systems, voters have no other choice but to trust the voting officials to verify that their votes have been counted, and counted as the voter intended. Voting by mail is becoming more prevalent (apart from the usual absentee voting), and in some jurisdictions, entire elections are being conducted exclusively by mail. Thus, there exists a need for a voting system, and preferably a vote by mail system, that gives voters confidence that their votes have been counted as intended by allowing the voters to verify their votes in a secure manner.